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Doug Ford is channelling his inner Mike Harris

Premier Doug Ford is declaring war on the poor. This is not a new idea. The last Ontario premier to explicitly take this tack was Mike Harris.

Harris’s welfare cuts may have been mean-spirited. But politically they were so successful that his Liberal successors were reluctant to reverse them.

Former Premier Mike Harris is seen at the swearing in ceremony for Premier Doug Ford in June. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star)

Ford’s cutbacks have started small. This week, Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod announced that the government is cutting a scheduled 3 per cent welfare rate increase in half.

For those on basic welfare, known as Ontario Works, that translates into a maximum loss of about $11 a month. Those eligible for the province’s Ontario Disability Support Program will lose up to about $17 per month.

In total, almost a million Ontarians are on the province’s welfare rolls.

The government is also putting on hold measures that would have allowed welfare recipients to keep more of any money earned through part-time work. As well, it is canceling a controversial pilot project to provide no-strings-attached subsidies to all low-income families.

But the real news is that the new Progressive Conservative government is planning a wholesale revamping of welfare.

“We’re going to hit the pause button on the previous government’s patchwork system and replace it with a system that helps stabilize people in need and support them to succeed,” MacLeod said Wednesday.

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What that means isn’t exactly clear. It sounds eerily like the pledge Harris made in 1995 to bring in “new and innovative programs to help those most in need and those who genuinely want a hand up, not a hand out.”

The existing programs, Harris said then, were too generous and encouraged layabouts to milk the system.

He promised to make welfare recipients work for their benefits.

Workfare, as the Harris scheme came to be called, never succeeded. Able-bodied welfare recipients were put to work on projects such as cleaning public parks. But those hired to maintain those parks complained — legitimately — that their jobs were in danger of being undercut by cheap labour.

Many disabled welfare recipients simply weren’t able to work. And single welfare recipients with small children couldn’t afford daycare.

By 1999, only 2 per cent of welfare recipients were performing workfare assignments. Eventually, everyone forgot about the idea.

What did last though were the savage 22 per cent cuts to welfare rates instituted by Harris in 1995. Even when his Progressive Conservatives were replaced by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in 2003, rates were kept down.

Indeed, as my friends on the Star editorial board have pointed out, even if the 3 per cent increase proposed this year by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government had been allowed to go ahead, welfare rates adjusted for inflation would still be lower than they were before the 1995 Harris cuts.

The reason? Welfare is not popular with voters in general. Many resent having their tax money going to support people they view as the undeserving poor. Politicians of all stripes understand this.

In short, don’t expect Ford’s planned welfare reforms to be generous. Like Harris in 1995, he has promised to cut taxes. Like Harris in 1995, he will have to find some way to pay for these tax cuts. Welfare is an easy target.

What else will Ford hit as he embarks upon his cost-cutting exercises? Right now, that is a mystery. But if he continues to channel his inner Mike Harris, expect him to seek “efficiencies” in health and education — just as the former premier did.

Expect him also to follow in the footsteps of Harris and Wynne by finishing the job of privatizing what’s left of the old Ontario Hydro.

And if there are any more provincial services left to be downloaded to municipalities, look for that as well.

It’s the kind of thing Mike Harris did.

Thomas Walkom is a Toronto-based columnist covering politics. Follow him on Twitter: @tomwalkom

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